Framing the Narrative: PR Through a Painter’s Eye

Last Friday, I was sitting in a conference room with a colleague discussing an exciting idea—one that wasn’t yet fully formed. As we talked, I compared the feeling to something I’ve experienced while painting, one of my favorite hobbies.

That’s when my colleague suggested something that stuck with me: What if you wrote a blog about how painting has shaped your perspective as a PR professional? I sat with the idea—and decided to give it a shot.

Here are three lessons:

#1: You Need a Good Foundation

I’ve only taken one art class as an adult. On a whim, I signed up for a CourseHorse class in oil painting in 2016. For our first assignment, each student chose a subject to paint. I had just seen a Degas exhibit at the MoMA and wanted to recreate his famous L’Etoile—with my own spin. Using the teacher’s method, I mapped out an outline and began with the background.

I remember the other students glancing at my canvas, confused. I could tell they didn’t get it. But I wasn’t trying to paint the dancers in the background exactly as they were. I wanted them to feel like a blur of motion—a moment caught in time, with all the focus on the main ballerina.

As I progressed, I could sense the others beginning to understand—but one lesson here is that sometimes you have to commit to your vision even if it doesn’t make sense to others. It also taught me that whether you’re starting a painting or a PR campaign, success often depends on a strong foundation. You have to build it slowly, intentionally, from the ground up. Once the structure is there, that’s when the real creativity can begin. I always start with the background.

#2: Question Everything

Water is one of the hardest things to paint. The first time I tried to paint it, I used way too much blue. What I needed instead was much more white and yellow and green—not just from what was reflected in the water (trees, for example), but to capture the way the sunlight struck its surface. This was strange, and somewhat disorienting, because I’d always associated water with the color blue.

As humans, we tend to categorize what we see. Leaves as green, water as blue, sunshine as yellow. But those snap judgments aren’t always right. There’s a process of unlearning and relearning in painting—in breaking the world down, color by color. You sort of see the truth of things, rather than just blindly following your assumptions. Not everything is what it seems on the surface.

The same is true in PR. We can read headlines, hear client messaging, and run with it—or we can pause, ask questions, and challenge the narrative. It’s from this process that the most powerful stories often emerge. The reporters and producers I meet with regularly tell me, “We want a contrarian view.” To uncover that, we sometimes need to push our clients to question their own assumptions—to question reality itself. This is at the heart of storytelling, on canvas and in client work.

#3: Stop Before You’re Ready

Painting can be addicting. I don’t really think when I paint, and I typically turn off my phone, so when I’m working on a project, I lose all sense of time.

But there’s a downside to that kind of intensity. I’m often so focused on what I’m doing, it can be fatiguing, and I sometimes don’t realize how tired I am until it’s too late.

I think this is a natural human tendency. We’re so excited about the destination that we rush to get there, without really savoring the moment or moving slowly enough to make sure we’re headed in the right direction. Thinking about this more: I worked on a painting last Thanksgiving, a black and white rose that remains one of my favorites. Since then, I’ve created two more black and white flowers, but with both, I know I rushed. And neither turned out quite the way I hoped.

When you care deeply about something, it’s easy to go all-in. Painting can feel that way. So can PR. I get genuinely excited about ideas, about helping clients achieve something meaningful. But I’ve learned that pressing pause—even when momentum is high—gives you the chance to refine. To make sure you’re not only on the right track, but also choosing the right moment to move. There’s power in the pause, in painting and in PR.